Some Comfort
by JMA
Summary: WARNING; Characters death. Snape and Harry musings at each others funerals. Slash. Complete


Some Comfort.  
  
Rating; g-pg  
  
Archive. If you want it take it, just tell me.  
  
Warning; Extreme soppiness and TWO character deaths.  
  
Disclaimer; Duh, the usual.  
  
Pairing HP/SS  
  
Summary; What if Snape died and Harry had lived? What if Harry died and Snape lived? Character thoughts at each others funeral.  
  
Authour's note. Please don't kick me for spelling. 'm sorry if everyone gets annoyed that I keep posting crappy fics. Who knows one day I may actually get better. This is complete coz i'm shoddy with series work. I'll re-take up the Explaination stories if anyone wants them.  
  
JMA  
  
***  
  
Sometimes you don't know what you have till it's gone.  
  
***  
  
So many had died. it was hard sometimes to connect faces to names, names to bodies as they were lowered into the ground. There were two funerals today, but Severus only heard one name. Harry Potter. The boy-who-lived had fallen like so many others.  
  
He didn't cry. Weasley and Granger did, so did Black. But it was unlike him. Severus didn't feel. Just because Harry had died he was not going to *pretend*. He considered it disrespectful. They began lowering the casket and Severus walked away, alone.  
  
***  
  
Harry looked around at all the weeping faces around him. Crying not for the deceased potions master but the nameless boy they buried beside him.   
  
/That isn't fair,/ Harry thought, /I should know his name. I should care and I should cry. That boy died and I lived, again./  
  
Like so many others.  
  
But his gaze kept falling on the potion masters coffin. Harry felt cold. Here was someone he had known, someone he never made peace with. He'd *hated* the man when he was alive but... Harry shook his head. He needed to think. He began to walk away, unnoticed.  
  
***  
  
Severus leaned back against the stone.  
  
/Stupid boy/  
  
He had tried to save him. He had so much as thrown himself in front of a particularly nasty curse so that Potter could escape. Too late. He had lived, Harry had not.  
  
Harry.  
  
He had always been Potter to him when he was alive but now it seemed awkward, innappropriate. The cold logical part of Severus's brain told him that he wouldn't have to worry so much anymore, no Voldemort, no Harry Potter to watch out for. Yet, somehow, he couldn't help feeling a loss.  
  
He *had* looked after him. it gave his life purpose.  
  
The corners of Severus's mouth lifted.   
  
/Perhaps I'll even miss him/  
  
***  
  
Harry kept hid head down and his hands in his pockets.  
  
/He was a bastard/ Harry kept trying to tell himself.  
  
He was. A greasy Bastard. But he was gone. The stupid git had thrown himself in front of a curse to save Harry's life.  
  
/he was always trying to protect me, when he wasn't making my life a living hell./   
  
It occurred to Harry that Professor Severus Snape had created a void in him.  
  
Harry was going to miss him.  
  
***  
  
/I don't regret, regret is to want to change the past/  
  
Severus closed his eyes and tried to think of what he could possibly change to bring him back then snorted to himself. He was too practical for what if's.  
  
Harry Potter had annoyed the shit out of him when he was alive and now... noe he had left Severus with the uneasy feeling that he had missed something, that there could have been something more on offer. Severus brought his hand over his yes and massaged his temples with his thumb and forefinger.  
  
/Great, now I'm considering what it would have been like to love a dead man./  
  
Harry had never offered him love and Severus had never asked for it. It was absurd to think of it now.  
  
Now that Harry Potter was walking towards him.  
  
/Great! And now I'm hallucinating/  
  
He was too solid to be a ghost or anything other than the creation of a mind going mad. It didn't surprise Severus, nothing could right now. Madness, he might as well embrace it, and now he was going to add talking to himself to his list of lunacies.  
  
***  
  
"I suppose you've got something to say?'  
  
Haarry had to restrain himself from gawking. He was certain he's imagined to figure of his former teacher.  
  
/I've been hit in the head one too many times./  
  
" No confessions of undying love?"  
  
The years in the cupbeard and war with Voldemort were definately taking it's toll. Snape had come back from the dead to say *that*?  
  
"Is that what this is about?" Harry finally asked.  
  
***  
  
/And now my hallucination is speaking back/  
  
It was a good question though and Severus was sure that one way or another he was asking it to himself.  
  
"It's not as though we actually *liked* each other is it? I don't know why i'mthinking of it now. It's too late anyway"  
  
Hallucination Harry seemed to consider this for a few moments.  
  
"I *could* have liked you. I did I suppose. I think we just ended up liking the*idea* of hating each other."  
  
Definitely a hallucination. The real Harry Potter never made this much sense.  
  
***  
  
Ghost Snape nodded. Harry had never thought too much about his relationshipwith Snape andthis moment of introspection was coming as quite a surprise.Harry wished it had come while the other man was still alive.  
  
He new better than to try to touch a ghost, but he reached out his hand and let out a gasp of surprise when it connected with flesh.  
  
"So you're able to touch me" Snape seemed to say almost to himself.  
  
"Maybe we should have tried touching each other before" Harry had lost the man oncce, he wasn't about to make the same mistake a second time.  
  
  
  
***  
  
Some part of Severus's brain was telling that this was perverse, but the simple act of touch had opened up far more than Severus was willing or able to control.  
  
He leaned down to kiss the illusion of Harry Potter.   
  
Who he missed.  
  
Who he could have loved.  
  
***  
  
They broke the kiss wearing mutual expressions of surprise.  
  
It *couldn't* be. He was dead!  
  
"But that was real"  
  
***  
  
Albus watched the mourners retreat back inside tha castle. All the victims of the last war were buried on Hogwarts grounds. To the two buried here today it had been the only true home they had ever known.  
  
He'd buried too many children, too many young men and women, but the last two were more painful. He had considered them like his own children.   
  
Harry James Potter.  
  
Severus Snape.  
  
But he understood enough to know that the dead weren't really gone, they were just somewhere else. It was enough to convince his old bones to keep on living instead of wasting away into sorrow.  
  
Albus wondered briefly if they'd get on in death better then they had in life.   
  
Something he'd have to ask Sybil later. 


End file.
